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by gotham_ruaidh



Series: Gotham Writes for Imagine Claire & Jamie [71]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 08:12:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12164970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotham_ruaidh/pseuds/gotham_ruaidh
Summary: Jamie and Claire - separated by two centuries - witness each other's pain and isolation.





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**Author's Note:**

> originally posted at [Imagine Claire & Jamie](https://imagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com/post/165403170724/interstitial) on tumblr

More gunshots. Echoing through his teeth, his aching limbs, the pool of blood beside him.

Jamie Fraser watched condensation gather on the thatched roof, the lower half of his body a numb mass of pain, his slashed left hand still curled as if holding the talisman of Claire that was now gone.

Just like her.

“Who’s next?” A proper, clipped English voice.

Everything and nothing like Claire’s.

It took a thousand years to turn his head toward the cheery corporal scratching away in his book.

Such a farce – executing traitors in an orderly, honorable fashion after such an unorganized battle.

Gone. Claire, Murtagh – even the damn fool prince, marveling at a silver cup while his men died around him.

Rupert paced at his side. Whispering the Act of Contrition over and over in Gaelic.

An hour to prepare.

For what? He was already dead.

His teeth ran over dry lips, watching the next poor bastard march outside. The doorway darkened with redcoats…and then light poured through.

Blinding.

Too bright for sunlight –

Claire moaned.

His eyes adjusted – and there she was. Pregnant. Laying on some kind of elevated table, legs spread for the whole world – surrounded by men swaddled in white cloth. Masks covering their faces, like highwaymen.

Oh Christ –

“CLAIRE!” he screamed, throat tearing with hoarseness. “CLAIRE!”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Randall – you won’t feel a thing.”

Impossible strength surged through his limbs, and he ran to her. “Claire!”

His hands passed through her shoulders.

One of the men circled around her – and walked right through him.

“And when you wake up,” he continued, speaking as if to a small child, “you’ll be a mother.”

Jamie walked right up to this man, this idiot – fists raised, kilt swishing behind.

“She *is* a mother, you bastard!”

“Wait…no…” Claire panted, voice rising in panic. “I don’t want to be put under!”

Put under what? Why were these men ignoring her? Why was she surrounded by men at all?

“What is wrong with you, you bastard?!” Jamie lunged but felt only air. “Stop! Stop!”

“Now now, Mrs. Randall – all is well.”

Jamie surged back to Claire – for all was clearly not well – her eyes wide with terror, her breath shallow, her brow shiny with sweat.

“Stop!” He pushed and kicked but to no avail. “Stop! Stop!”

“You needn’t worry your pretty little head about anything.”

Jamie whirled and punched the man in the face.

Felt nothing.

Brought forward by his own momentum, he crashed to the ground. Re-opened the wound on his leg.

“Please,” Claire pleaded. “Don’t tell me what I need…”

Jamie didn’t hear the rest of her words – consumed by the bone-deep need to protect her. Take her to a safe place.

Why was she all alone? Did she have no friends, no women to attend her? Damn Frank Randall for not being man enough to remain by her side! What he wouldn’t give to share this with her, take some of her pain away…

Jamie struggled to his knee, then his feet – blood pouring down his leg. Racing to Claire, desperate, arms ready to scoop her up.

He felt nothing.

A woman pushed a metal cylinder against Claire’s arm – and she screamed.

Jamie scrabbled at Claire – from above, from the side, from below.

Feeling only the hard, cool metal of the table.

“Stop it! No! Stop!”

Desperately flailing at the men and woman. Watching, powerless, as they lay a black mask over her face, and began to cut open her belly.

Blood. So much blood. Like in the Bois…

Claire jostled awake – screaming, cursing at the bloody stupid obstetrician.

Hay – and fresh Highland air – and

JAMIE

Moaning and pallid and barely alive, thrown like a sack of grain into the back of a wagon.

Memory flashed – Jamie wrapped in nothing but his plaid, jostling in the back of another wagon…

“Jamie!”

She struggled to sit up, then hovered over him, shaking his shoulder. Pressing her belly – their child – against him.

“Jamie! Wake up!”

Her fingers felt not the rough linen of his shirt, but the damp and sticky hay.

“Jamie!”

Gentle fingers on his filthy temples – but her healing hands passed right through him.

Her own hands shook in panic.

“Open your eyes! Look at me!”

His lips parted, just barely.

Claire glanced up – struck by the unspeakable beauty of the moors and mountains – focusing on the driver’s grimy back and greasy hair.

“You there! Stop! Stop the wagon!”

But she already knew he couldn’t hear her.

The wagon hit a particularly deep rut, and the wagon bed quickly bounced up and down. Jamie moaned. Blood oozed thickly from his leg.

“Jamie,” Claire sobbed, kissing his chin, smoothing back his hair, dabbing away the grime caked at the open neck of his shirt. “Jamie. Please hear me. *Please…*”

He shivered – from the cold, and the shock. Trying so hard to die.

So she curled around him – pressed their child against him – trying to save the life he clearly no longer wanted.

“Take me, Lord,” she whispered. “Take me, instead.”

Jamie coughed.

The baby kicked.

“Take me, Lord,” he rasped. “Kill those bastard doctors. Take me instead.”


End file.
